


In Any Other Life

by ashesandhoney



Series: It Came From Tumblr (Ficlet Collections) [3]
Category: Infernal Devices Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Fluff, so fluffy gonna die
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-17
Updated: 2018-01-12
Packaged: 2018-07-15 13:00:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 6,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7223323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashesandhoney/pseuds/ashesandhoney
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jessa modern/mundane AU fluff pieces. </p><p>These are not a cohesive story, each one is a different AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Snowed In

“You have got to be kidding me,” she said to the blank screen. Tessa held her phone in both hands as though if she prayed, she could change the call she had just gotten. That was ridiculous but anxiety made it seem like a horror story instead of a minor inconvenience. Outside the snow was falling and indoor everything was warm and quiet and cozy.

“What was the call about?” he asked and her heart seized up. He came to lean against the window beside her, his shoulder against the frame as he looked out past her at the swirling white. He was drawn in long sharp angles and wore a lot of plain clothes. Black and gray and white. The shirt was charcoal and hung just close enough to make it impossible to look at him without thinking about the shape of his chest but not so close to make it seem intentional. He was beautiful and it was utterly unintentional.

“Everyone else is staying in town,” she said.

“The storm is worse than expected?” he asked.

“Apparently,” she said.

“Do you want to go jump on all the beds?” he asked.

“What?” she asked turning to look at him. He had a half smile on his face. He was so serious. The exchange student with the British accent and the Chinese passport. He was leaving at the end of the semester and she was going to miss him more than she was willing to say out loud. They were almost friends. Shared classes, on the same volunteer club, living in the same apartment block. Close enough that she had offered him the extra spot on this little getaway, not so close she knew what to say when he asked her to jump on the bed.

“I grew up in a big fancy house like this. They probably hire people here to make the beds. I always wanted to just go and jump on them all until I’d made a huge mess. I never did. My mother would have been disappointed in me,” he said.

“That sounds terrifying,” she said turning away from the storm to look at him.

“It is,” he said, “But she’s half a world away. So as long as you keep the secret, she need never know,” he said.

Then he held out a hand. She stared at it a touch to long and he coloured just a little bit and dropped his hand. It was the blush. It was that pink high on his cheek bones that made her do it. She reached out and grabbed his hand before he could tuck it away in his pocket and start making apologies. He tightened his fingers and cracked her a real smile.

“Are you as lonely as you seem to be?” she wanted to ask but she didn’t. It wasn’t the sort of thing she could ask. Not to him. Maybe not to anyone.

Jem Carstairs didn’t let go of her hand as he pulled her away from the front windows and up the stairs. She stumbled a little on the landing and he pulled her back up with another bright grin. The biggest bedroom had a massive king bed and he jumped up and lifted her along behind him. He did it easily without letting go of her hand.

She had to brace her feet and the soft mattress below her felt unstable.

“Are you feeling rebellious yet?” she asked.

“Terribly so,” he said in that oddly formal language he sometimes fell back on. The blush was back as though he had just realized that maybe being a twenty something jumping on a bed made him a bit unusual. If he’d been suave, if he’d tried to flirt or seduce or play it off like a big joke, she would have just walked away but instead he got flustered and uneasy.

She took both his hands. Her own anxiety could bowl her over sometimes and she wasn’t going to let it happen to him. The flustered faded when she smiled at him and made a bit of a show of bracing her feet. He laughed back and raised his eyebrows at her and she took it as an invitation to start. They held on as they jumped on the bed. His hands were warm and strong and he led as they kicked pillows around and the perfectly tucked in bed covers came undone.

She wasn’t sure who slipped.

She landed on her back and he came crashing down around her. It happened fast. She was lying with one knee off the edge of the bed and the other tangled in his legs. He had caught himself so he didn’t smother her but her face was close enough to his chest to be very aware of the smell of him. Laundry soap and some sort of vaguely spicy cologne and somewhere in there the scent of skin.

He started to pull back but they were tangled. He end up braced over her, trying to free his leg from hers when she started to laugh. The giggles took over and she wasn’t trying to pull back or unhook her knee. She was laughing and leaning in until her forehead was on his shoulder.

A wave of desire ran through her and she pressed her face in tighter to his shirtfront to stop herself from leaning up and kissing him. Jem was unattainable. He was out of her league. She had fought this crush down until it was easy to ignore, until she could pretend that he was just another pretty boy. Likable enough but not like that. This close, it wouldn’t be ignored.

“I’m sorry,” he said with his mouth against her ear. The desire curled up in her stomach and promised her that this wasn’t just the flutterings of a crush. Her hand was flat against his chest. She didn’t remember putting it there.

“My fault,” she said.

He wasn’t trying to pull away anymore. The hand beside her head became an elbow as he settled back down against the bed. His body was close enough that she could tell that his heart was beating too fast. It was almost keeping up with hers. She lifted her face to find that he was looking down at her with the start of a smile on his mouth. She tilted her chin up a little more.

“I wasn’t trying to seduce you,” he said it like an apology.

“I know,” she said.

“I didn’t think you were interested,” he said.

“I didn’t think you’d ever looked at me twice,” she said.

“I haven’t, I stare sometimes. I look at you a hundred times a day. I haven’t learned a thing in statistics all term. Looking twice isn’t enough,” he said.

She laughed again, leaning in as she did. He was closer now. Her cheek brushed his and his breath against her hair made her shiver. She called up every memory. She hadn’t caught him staring. Maybe once or twice but she’d thought it was nothing. Her hand slid up his chest and settled on his neck. He put a very gentle finger on her chin and turned her face back to him.

“What if I kissed you?” he asked and those nerves were back in his expression. His eyes a touch too wide and unwavering.

“What if I made you wait for a first date?” she asked.

“I can wait,” he said.

“I can’t,” she admitted and pulled him down to her. The very first kiss was just a brush of lips but the next one was not so tentative. Her arms found their way up around his neck and his around her back so that she arched up to keep their bodies close. She had kissed boys before but it had never been like this. It had always been an action, this was an experience. His hands explored. Stroking and tentative. He ran a finger along the hem of her t-shirt until she paused the kiss long enough to nod and then his palm was against her stomach and she tightened her fingers where they disappeared into his hair.

Somewhere downstairs a door crashed open and there was the sound of boot stomping to knock off snow. The sound snapped the bubble they’d wrapped around themselves. Jem pulled back until he was sitting and he looked at her with pink across his cheeks again. She sat up as well and didn’t pull back. Her one leg was draped over his knee and she was close to him.

“I thought no one was coming?” he said.

“Tessie?!” a voice from below hollered.

“Nate,” she said, “The guys from school aren’t coming. I didn’t check with Nate. He rented the damn place, of course he’s coming.”

Then she raised her voice and called down, “Be right there,” even though yelling things to her overprotective brother while draped around the boy she had just been making out with made her twinge with guilt. Jem looked even more frazzled by the realization that it was Nate downstairs but he swallowed it all back down until he looked almost calm. She pet his hair down, finger combing the soft strands back into place while he stared at her with this incredulous look on his face like he’d found some priceless treasure.

“This, we come back to later,” she said and then she pressed another kiss to Jem’s mouth before untangling herself completely and standing up. He hooked his fingers into her belt loop and spun her back around. He kissed her again.

“We definitely come back to this,” he agreed. Below them, Nate yelled something else and Tessa stole one more kiss before turning away from him to go downstairs and pretend her heart wasn’t trying to escape from her chest and climb into his.


	2. Knocking on the Wrong Door

She pulled open the door, expecting Sophie and a pizza but instead a stranger stood in the hallway outside her apartment. He was tall and narrow and had opened his mouth to say something before he stopped and stared. There were roses in his arm and a box of something in his hand. He went from determined to nervous in the amount of time it took their eyes to meet. 

“Wrong door?” she asked. 

“Yes,” he said slowly. 

“I’m only a little bit jealous,” she laughed and he smiled at her. His smile was warm and genuine. She returned it and took just a fraction of a minute to stare at him. Dark hair that fell over his forehead and he kept twitching away from his eyes in a little gesture that she could just imagine was habitual and not just a function of his hands being full. 

Across the hallway the door to 632 instead of her own 623 swung open. The neighbour set eyes on Tessa’s surprise visitor and glared accusingly. He went from grinning to something that approached terrified and desperate. Her face fell into an expression of the jilted lover.

It all fell together, he was the stupid ex. 

The girl across the hall liked to tell stories about her boys when she was in the laundry room or when they met at the mail box. Her favourite was the one that had fallen in love with her because he was “cute but stupid” and she’d been playing with him for months. Tessa’s heart and gone out to the boy who was obviously in way over his head with someone who was never going to love him back and was always going to mock him to strangers in her building. 

Tessa stepped in to him before he could turn and try and apologize and explain away the numerical mix up. This beautiful boy needed an out from that toxic sludge pit of a relationship and she was in the perfect situation to provide it. She put an arm around his waist and put her chin on his shoulder. 

“Sarah? If I leave you a key, can you feed my cat tomorrow morning? I don’t know if we’ll be back by then,” she said with as much perfect obliviousness as she could muster. 

Sarah bristled, territorial and furious and then she waved it off with, “Cheating ass and the man stealing whore, you two enjoy each other,” before she slammed her door. Tessa pulled the boy who had just been called a “simpering twit” into her apartment and closed the door. 

“I’m sorry if that was unwelcome,” she said, “She talks about you and she needed a dose of being the jealous one.” 

He was still staring at her. He held out the bundle of flowers and she took them carefully. No one had ever given her a dozen roses meant for their horrible girlfriend before. No one had ever given her a dozen roses for any reason before. She smiled at him. 

“She is going to phone me and scream,” he said looking back at the door like he could still see Sarah through it. 

“Block her,” Tessa said with a shrug, “Don’t even answer it. Don’t go back. Don’t date people who call you a cheater for mixing up their apartment number or tell the neighbours that you’re only good for the screw.”

She turned scarlet and half hid behind her arm full of roses, “I am so sorry. I should not have said that.” 

“I think I needed to hear it,” he said and he pushed the flowers back down so he could see her face. “Thank you. If you ever need me to return the favour somehow, let me know.” 

“Do you want to stay for movie night?” she asked. “Sophie’s bringing pizza and I think Charlotte’s bringing wine. We’re going to watch something obnoxiously romantic but you could stay.”

“You don’t know my name and you’re inviting me to stay?” he said. 

“What’s your name?” she asked. They were still speaking over the bouquet and she was never going to shake the connection between his eyes and the smell of roses. She would be a hundred and the smell of roses would remind her of those eyes. 

It hadn’t been intentional when she’d issued the invite, the words had just rolled out. Now she raised her chin and leaned in just a bit so they were as close as they could get without putting down the flowers. She wanted this person to stay. She wanted his opinions on movies and to see how he responded to Charlotte when she got overbearing or Sophie when she started in on a rant. 

“Jem, James, everyone calls me Jem,” he said fumbling just a little bit like he wasn’t used to having girls stare at him over roses. Where had Sarah found him? He wasn’t anything like the other guys who actually liked to play her games. 

“Do you want to stay for movie night, Jem?” she asked. 

“Yes,” he said and he gave her that glorious smile again. She leaned over the flowers and kissed him on the cheek and then turned before he could see her blush and led him into the apartment. 


	3. Practice Kisses (Theatre AU)

“Are you always this nervous?” Tessa asked.

“I play small roles, I am not the lead. Its only one night, right? He’ll be back by the big show on Saturday,” he said.

“It will be fine,” she said.

“I am not really an actor,” he said.

“You know this role. You have been the understudy for a month of rehearsals, you can prompt his lines faster than the director. It’s nothing to worry about,” she said.

“And when I miss the kiss in act 3 and headbutt you in the face?” Jem said.

“Stand up,” she said.

They were sitting in the middle of the set on the chairs in the little kitchen where the opening scene happened. She was just wearing a tshirt and a pair of jeans but he wore the costume he’d just had a final fitting for because he’d actually have to wear it tomorrow. The thought made him want to drop out of the cast all together. It had never been his idea to join the surprisingly professional local theatre troupe. That was Will. Will who was abandoning him to the starring role he didn’t want while he went to visit his sister.

Tessa pulled him up and they walked through the lines and the blocking as they’d done in rehearsal and then at rhe point where the kiss was meant to happen, when she was angry and he was supposed to grab her and pull her in for kiss, they didn’t stop. Usually they did. There had been a few run throughs but the kiss was the easy part so they usually skipped.

This time she finished her line and he grabbed her face and he kissed her hard. It was fast and angry and she was meant to push him away but she didn’t. He faltered and didn’t step back. She hesitated and then kissed him back just a tiny bit, almost an accident, almost small enough to ignore. He didn’t ignore it. He kissed her back like he meant it. She got closer and he let his hands slide back into her hair.

“I don’t know if that was in the script,” she whispered when they broke apart. “You should probably run through it again, just to be sure.”

He kissed her again.


	4. The 3am Fire Alarm (Neighbour AU)

His hair was rumpled and a white blonde that almost looked silver in the light of the lamp posts that lined the parking lot. He wore a huge, bulky sweater and nothing else but a pair of boxer shorts that hugged close enough that she needed to pull her gaze away before he noticed. He was a cartoon character. Unusually coloured hair, huge round body, long thin legs. He should not have been attractive but he was.

The sweater rustled and his arms were folded outside of it and she didn’t disguise the fact that she was staring this time. He made a face and she almost recoiled like he was about to burst like a hapless space explorer in one of the Alien movies.

He laughed and adjusted his arms like he was holding onto something and the face of a cat appeared in the head hole of the sweater. He had to tilt his chin back to make room for the creature as it attempted to scrabble out of a hole too small for it. It was not a small cat from the look of how it was moving beneath the sweater. It was fluffy and gray with a smushed in nose and at least one white paw.

Tessa couldn’t help herself. She laughed. He looked over at her, trying to keep the cat from escaping the sweater. She hadn’t seen him around the building before and she wasn’t sure she would ever be able to shake the memory of him glowering and fighting with his own shirt. She would see him in a business suit and picture skinny legs and the gray tail escaping out the bottom of his hoodie.

“Next time, I leave you to burn,” he growled at the cat as he pushed it’s head back inside the shirt and Tessa laughed harder. There was a crowd around him now. Everyone else who had evacuated from the blaring alarm was watching the show. She came over as the cat made another scrabbling attempt at escape and he winced, probably getting clawed in the chest.

He was still struggling as the all clear was sounded and they started filing back into the building. Tessa glanced at him as they went and though he flashed her an embarrassed smile, she didn’t get a chance to ask his name.


	5. You'll Distract Me

Jem leaned back against the counter and watched her work. He had been tasked with cutting and carrots and had turned around to ask what else she wanted him to do and gotten distracted. It had been a snowy night and the sunlight reflecting in off the freshly fallen snow was blinding. Tessa stood in a shaft of sunlight and bit her lip as she read through a recipe book.

She glanced up at him and he smiled at her. She had a bit of flour on her cheek and her apron tie had slipped a little so it was tied over one shoulder. It was rare for Tessa to look rumpled and Jem liked it. There was something comfortable about her like this. Softer. Imperfect and beautiful. Jem crossed the room to her.

“What are you staring at?” she asked.

“You.”

“My sauce will burn.”

“Sauce?”

“If you kiss me, I will get distracted and my sauce will burn.”

Jem laughed and tapped her on the end of the nose with his finger, “Can’t have that.”

“No. Here, cut these, small pieces. They’re for the stuffing,” she said putting a bag of onions in his hands. He was still smiling at her. She pressed her finger into the end of his nose and said, “Go. Now. Stop looking at me like you want to kiss me.”

“Later?”

She tapped his nose one last time and said, “Yes, later, we can save the kissing for later.”

“Barely tolerable but I’ll try and survive,” Jem said.

Tessa snorted a laugh at him and turned back to the stove and her cooking. He watched her in the sunlight a little longer before he went back to the task she had given him.


	6. Kittens

“What is that?” Tessa asked coming to sit beside him. He had a cardboard box balanced on his knees and he gave her half smile when she looked at it and raised her eyebrows. 

“A favour for a friend,” Jem said. 

“A favour that makes that sound?”

“Yes.”

“Why are you being clandestine about this? What’s in the box?”

“Three week old kittens.” 

“What?” Tessa asked with a laugh. 

Jem sighed and explained the story. One of the women he worked with at the clinic fostered kittens from the humane society and they had had more come in in the last week than the usual fosters could take. These three didn’t have a mother but were otherwise healthy. Jem claimed that aside from the bottle feeding, they would be easy to take care of. 

“You’re a pushover,” Tessa said. 

“They’re adorable,” Jem said and then shook his head because she wouldn’t stop looking at him with a smirk on her face, “Yes, fine, I’m a push over. Let me introduce to them.”

He opened up the box. In a nest of blankets in the bottom were three black and white balls of fluff, crawling over each other and making soft little sounds. Jem grinned at them and picked one out to pass to Tessa to hold. She took it in both hands and stopped teasing him to hold the kitten up in front of her face and make cooing noises at it. 

Jem put the other two on her lap and set the box aside to watch her try to corral all three wobbly little creatures so they didn’t fall off the edge of the sofa. They marched around the cushions between Jem and Tessa with their tails straight up in the air, making sounds that might someday be meows. Jem scooped one up and cuddled it while Tessa played with the other two. He had been so worried that she would be upset but she was giggling at the kittens and smiling. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jem would. 
> 
> Jem will probably keep at least one of them.


	7. Christmas Market

The street was long and crowded with the evening crowd on their way to the market that glowed ahead of them. A Christmas Market, full of stalls that sold mulled wine and trinkets, there would be people singing carols and a decorated tree. It wasn’t so different from the things he might have seen in 1878. 

And yet. 

A family beside him lined there daughters up in front of a decorated lamp post and snapped a picture on a cellphone. The music floated down from speakers above them and carried the distinct tinniness of being recorded. Tessa claimed she couldn’t hear the difference but there was something about live music that set it apart. Recorded sounds weren’t the same somehow. The shops sold trinkets and the shops sold ornaments and the shops sold cases to put your cellphone in. It smelled like cinnamon and snow and people but the braziers burned with electric heat and the way was lit by electric light. 

“Do you like it?” Tessa asked. 

“It’s wonderful,” Jem told her as he took her arm and pulled her a little closer to him in the crowd as they wound their way through the streets toward the Christmas tree. It was wonderful. It was lovely. He couldn’t put his finger on his unease. 

Tessa could sense it. She leaned her shoulder against his and held his hand a little tighter. She didn’t ask. She understood. If anyone understood, Tessa understood. The world turned on around them. Traditions changed and evolved and they could change with them or be left behind to become relics of a long gone time. 

“Let’s go over there,” Jem said. 

They had set up a photo opportunity beside the tree. A well lit spot with giant ornaments against brickwork and pine boughs. You could take a selfie and the signs encouraged you to post it to social media with a variety of hashtags. Bizarre and arcane and incomprehensible but the thought of time leaving him behind had hit him like a blow. He wanted to throw himself into the now. The strangeness of it. The mundaneness of it. All mixed up together. 

This world didn’t have space for someone like him so he would have to carve it out for himself. 

Tessa laughed along with him and kissed his cheek for a photograph that he didn’t post but knew that he would save and look at a hundred times. 

They would carve out a space for themselves together.


	8. Training

“Was that supposed to hurt?” Jem asked.

Tessa glowered at him. He was bouncing on his toes, whirling a staff around in one hand before tossing it to the other and repeating the gesture. He was grinning.

She had only landed the one hit and now he was being smug about it.

“I must have been this fast as a Silent Brother but it didn’t feel the same,” he said. “I definitely wasn’t this fast on the yin fen. I was fast enough but it didn’t feel like this either.”

Tessa’s annoyance softened as he spoke. Then he stepped into another swing that took her off guard and she went down. Again. She hit him in the ankle with her staff as she fell and he stumbled over her before taking the pratfall and landing beside her with a dramatic flourish.

“Having fun?” Tessa grumbled.

“More than you,” he said with another laugh and she leaned over to punch him in the shoulder which just made him laugh harder.


	9. Socks

The weather had turned toward winter and Tessa had complained that morning about cold feet so Jem had picked the [socks](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fs-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com%2Foriginals%2F7f%2F12%2F34%2F7f12348c79ca155cf2c8dbd80bcd7da4.jpg&t=ZDI4NzBmMmQ0NDlmMWYwMGMwZGE3NDVhZDgwNjAxMTZjMGRlMDJiYyxpZk4xdm5QSw%3D%3D&b=t%3A8Yk0M2AS606yyJysQ8I7xA&p=http%3A%2F%2Fupagainstabookcase.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F151476839049%2Fthigh-high-socks-jessa&m=1) up on the way home. The blue wool had felt heavy and warm through the package and he was sure that she would like the colour. 

He dropped them over her shoulder onto her book when he came through the door. She had been curled in the green arm chair with a quilt tucked over her. He didn’t wait to see if she opened them. He took the rest of his purchases into the other room to put them away. 

She laughed and he stuck his head back out into the living room and raised his eyebrows. 

“These are not socks,” she said. 

“They’re definitely socks, it says so on the bag, I even checked that they were your size,” he said. 

“Look at them!” 

She held them up and they hung down from her outstretched hand to the floor. She considered them a moment and then stood up and shimmied out of her jeans in the middle of the living room. Jem’s lips quirked into a half smile all on their own and Tessa returned it in a moment of silent conversation.  She pulled the socks hopping to keep her balance while she untwisted the fabric. 

Jem was leaning against the wall now, just watching. 

[The](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fs-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com%2F564x%2Fd8%2F39%2F0f%2Fd8390f64fa94b667e7381d8a97909b64.jpg&t=ODNjMTM1ZjE3ZDNlMGFkMzhhMjZjNWYyZDljODVmZGNhMTUzMjFlZixpZk4xdm5QSw%3D%3D&b=t%3A8Yk0M2AS606yyJysQ8I7xA&p=http%3A%2F%2Fupagainstabookcase.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F151476839049%2Fthigh-high-socks-jessa&m=1) big white knit jumper she wore hung almost to the tops of the socks she was still straightening on her upper thigh. With her hair loose and that half smile still on her face, the entire outfit was far more intimate than he might have expected socks could be. 

“I like them,” he said. 

“They’re not going to be much warmer like this,” she said without reaching for her jeans. 

“There are other ways to stay warm in the winter,” he said. 


	10. Sharing a Table at a Cafe AU

The girl was a librarian. Jem had seen her there a few times. He wasn’t really much of a reader. He was one of those people who read to learn things or he read authors he already knew he liked. He did not read deeply or widely. Poetry made him roll his eyes and shake his head.

He had read more weird books in the last two months than he had read in since college. He came to the same cafe he always came to but now he kept a book with him to keep up the appearance that he read during his breaks from the freelance translating he did that sometimes covered his bills.

It had finally worked.

“I saw you with the new one by Starkweather last week, did you like it?” she asked.

She was apparently not the type of person to interrupt someone while they were reading but they’d been lined up to buy coffee and she’d asked him with a soft smile that made his heart melt a little bit.

“It was ponderous and awful,” slipped out before he could reconsider it. He’d done it now. He was going to offend her during their first conversation.

Instead she laughed and it was soft and musical and her nose scrunched up when she did.

“I don’t know what you expected, he wrote that book about the tragic death of his granddaughter,” she said.

“The book came to me through a friend, I’d never read anything else by him. I wasn’t warned of the misery and obnoxious writing,” Jem said.

“Don’t ever read anything by Whitelaw either then,” she said.

“Noted,” he said.

She turned and ordered and he didn’t meet up with her again until she was stirring milk into her tea.

“I am monopolizing one of the big tables at the back, if you need somewhere to sit,” he said and didn’t choke on the words. It wasn’t quite asking her out but it was still terrifying.

“Did you save me an outlet?”

“No, but we can share.”

Oh God, now he was flirting but luckily she smiled at that too and followed him back to his table.


	11. Thanksgiving Dinner (Exchange Student AU)

“It’s a travesty that you don’t do turkey dinners in Shanghai,” Tessa said. 

Jem smiled and shrugged, “It’s a travesty that it’s so hard to find a mooncake in this city.”

Jem was the exchange student she had been placed with for a group project early in September. They’d bonded over a group that did nothing and had spent most of the semester sitting together. He had brought her a mooncake over the mid-autumn festival and inviting him for thanksgiving had been an attempt at repaying that. 

They had had a few other friends in and out of the house all morning but Tessa’s roommate was off buying the ingredients they had forgot before the stores closed for the day and for a little while they were the only ones in the house. They had been comparing traditions and cutting vegetables. 

She turned to drop the potatoes she had finished into the pot and bumped into him. Again. He looked down at her with a smile and for a moment she didn’t step away. 

“You’re in the way Mr. Gray,” she said and he didn’t move. 

“I need to stir this red stuff, Mrs. Carstairs,” he told her stepping just a little too far into her personal space. She reached around him, dropping the potatoes into the pot while he looked down at her. 

They’d been making it a joke all day, telling their friends it was their kitchen. Jem had called her the Mrs and she had shaken her head and then that had stuck. She had told him they were taking her last name and he had refused to call her by it so they’d landed on those nicknames. It had been going on since lunch. They started early - baking bread and letting things marinate - if Tessa was being completely honest with herself she had chosen elaborate recipes so she would have an excuse to trap Jem in the kitchen with her all day. 

“We’d make a terrible married couple,” she told him. 

“Really?” he asked tilting his head to look at her and his expression wasn’t as teasing as she expected. It made her stop. She looked up at him and tried to figure out what exactly his tone meant. She still had potato starch all over her hands and he was holding the spoon from the cranberry sauce like he’d forgotten it was there. 

“Maybe not terrible,” she said. 

“I don’t think we’d be terrible,” he said and one of them had gotten closer. She heard the spoon clang as he dropped it back in the pot and then he settled his hand against the side of her neck. 

He looked like he was about to say something but she took the invitation and leaned up to kiss him before he did. Surprise rippled through him and she let go, stumbling back as she realized she had crossed a line. She looked at him with wide eyes and the start of an apology on her lips. 

The surprise vanished and he followed her, backing her up against the counter top and kissing her back. 


	12. Meeting at a Wedding AU

The girl was a bridesmaid. Jem had seen her at the church service and now she was perched on the balcony outside of the reception under a lantern. Dinner was over but the open bar was still going strong. He’d slipped outside to avoid the noise. She didn’t notice him as he stared for a moment too long.

The dress was pink and ruffled and hideous but she managed to wear it well possibly by virtue of simply being gorgeous. Tall and graceful with a sarcastic little twist of a smile that he’d only seen once when the bride and groom had been reading the vows they had written themselves.

He wanted to say something but she had brought a book to a wedding and was obviously trying to avoid people so he just crossed to the railing and leaned on it. He checked his phone and scrolled around without looking at anything.

When he glanced her way again, she was looking back. He smiled and she gave him a slightly softer version of her own little grin. Her eyes were gray in the light of the lantern and her brown hair was piled up on her head in a elegant twist of curls and little pink flowers.

“Lovely party, isn’t it?” she said.

“It certainly is beautiful,” he said but his eyes lingered on her and he hadn’t actually noticed the decor. It had been pink and elaborate because it was Jessamine’s wedding so of course it was pink and elaborate.

Jem pulled his eyes away and looked out at the grounds of the old Manor house like they held some answer he desperately needed, like how to flirt with girls properly.

She laughed and slid down off the stone ledge to come lean beside him and look at the rolling lawn below them.

“You should count yourself lucky that you haven’t had to be part of the planning process for the last six months,” she said.

“Are you one of Jessie’s friends?” He asked.

“God no, Nate’s my brother, I still haven’t figure out what they see in each other,” she said and then bit her lip and turned to him as though realizing that he had to be one of Jessie’s friends. Jem started to laugh.

“Jessie and I went through the same foster home at one point. Not that she would thank me for informing anyone she was ever a foster kid. I think she invited everyone she ever met. I’m happy for her though,” he said.

“Are you here alone?” she asked which was a little too close to home and he shot back, “Are you?” before he could stop himself.

“Yes,” she said with a sad little smile.

“Sorry, my break up is recent enough that her name is on the table setting beside mine. I didn’t mean to be an asshole,” he said.

“Her loss.”

He grinned at that.

“I’m Jem,” he said.

“Tessa,” she held out a hand and since he’d already started the romantic cliche, he kissed the back of her fingers rather than shaking it.

“Do you dance, Jem?” she asked.

“Not well,” he said.

“Dance with me, anyways?” Tessa pulled back from the balcony and kept his hand.

  
For the first time all night, his face broke into a real smile as he nodded.


End file.
